Just curious here, what do people here think of George Orwell?

[Archae]

I consider Orwell to be one the best political novelists.

In fact his name has become part of English.
"Orwellian-of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of George Orwell or the totalitarian future described in his antiutopian novel 1984"

[Odin2005]

1. IMO he belongs right up there with Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. He is

Some of his short stories should be required reading too. "The Hanging" is a chilling, but should be required reading. He wrote that as a young man, in service in India... yes, it is an execution.

[pscot]

3. He's always been one of my personal heroes

[spiderpig]

4. Few books have been as influential as 1984.

I've read it and listened to the audio at least a dozen times.

We all have our own Room 101.

[seabeyond]

5. i was disappointed in 1984. i had heard so much about it, for so many years.

and i had finally gotten it and i was disappointed. i read so much and it was 3, 4 yrs ago. i dont remember exactly why. i just remember coming from it thinking it was not all that. maybe it was that he wrote it so long ago and pertains to things today. but i wasnt thrilled.

both kids read it and liked it. had my niece read it and was good for her. maybe it was cause nothing new and so beyond now, being older and all.

[The Magistrate]

8. It Read A Lot Better Fifty Years Ago, Ma'am

Anything projecting a future already long past will read a little stale. And so much of what was new insight then has passed into common understanding that it is hard to appreciate, come to late.

[seabeyond]

11. that is what i figured. kids reading it would get more out of it. nt

[Bolo Boffin]

12. "so much of what was new insight then has passed into common understanding"

My exact problem when I finally saw Fantasia for the first time. I was left cold until I realized that it was the source of all the things I'd seen before in other animated features.

[killbotfactory]

21. It's not really topical, unless you are studying North Korea

It's more about the extremes that the powerful will resort to, in order to maintain that power.

[seabeyond]

22. ya. it didnt really stay with me. nt

[Honeycombe8]

31. But more than that. He predicted what life could (would) become like .....

Big Brother. The citizenry is videotaped everywhere they go, all their actions are captured on tape. That has turned out to be true here in America, in large part. Your car is photographed going through toll booths, down highways, there are pics of your house and street and car posted on the internet by Google and others, you are videotaped going into and out of most public buildings and stores.

The TVs were large and flat and hung on walls in 1984. And so it is today.

Utilitiy companies can control your meter and some thermostats remotely.

It was a warning at how easily the masses can be controlled through propaganda and threats. And so it is. We saw the ra-ra in the leadup to the Iraq War, as lies were told to the masses, who were too easily ready to believe. And how easily the masses agreed to be spied on by the American government, giving up our most basic liberty on which the govt was founded, for the sake of weeding out "undesirables" who might mean us harm.

It was a book ahead of its time.

[killbotfactory]

55. It's one of my favorite books

It's had a huge impact on me. The dystopia he was describing resembled more of a totalitarian state model. What always struck me is that the US and other supposedly free countries have come to a system so similar to what is described, but without the overtly police state methodologies imposed. We are free compared to the world depicted in 1984, but we are manipulated in such similar ways.

[MotorCityMan]

24. I finally read 1984 a couple of years ago

Borrowed it from my partner's nephew, who had to read it for high school. I really enjoyed (? not really the right word, not a real upbeat read), and it surprised me how spot on it was with what was going on currently in politics.

[Codeine]

57. I read it as a kid in the 80s (probably 1984, of course)

and was blown away. These days, however, I find 1984 to be far inferior to his essays and Down and Out in Paris and London. The latter is still very powerful, especially in light of the growing awareness of entrenched poverty and the increasingly vast gap between the wealthy and the rest of us. I think for most readers the particular bogeymen of 1984 faded away when the old Soviet system died.

[marasinghe]

6. one of his best, yet least read books: the autobiographical "Down & Out in London & Paris".

details his experiences:
as a homeless tramp & hobo, and, denizen of the lodgings for the poor, in London & around England;
as well as his experiences as savagely exploited, penniless dishwasher in the restaurants of Paris.
recommended reading for all, this book is a damning indictment of poverty & the exploitation of the poor.
his descriptions of the hordes of bed-bugs scenting the arrival of fresh blood in the rooms of the poor lodging-houses in Paris, and their relentless advance along the walls towards the lodger's bed, is straight out horror.


on the downside -- he was so virulently anti-authoritarian that he conflated left-wing liberals with the communist Soviet dictatorship, and, was unable to judge objectively.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/29/opinion/george-orwell-s-list.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
from this NYT opinion piece:

".... Orwell secretly wrote down the names of prominent figures who he felt were so enamored of the Soviet Union that they had lost their political independence. He sent some names to a propaganda unit of the British Foreign Office, suggesting they were not fit for writing assignments .... some comments are simply appalling. The anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual overtones of his notes are clear ...."

a college English teacher once mentioned that, Orwell (real name: Eric Blair) - was a script-writer in Hollywood & supported the Joseph McCarthy hearings. but, i've not seen any evidence of that.

[sendero]

35. His "conflation".

.... was actually spot on IMHO. People who want to run everyone's lives are people who want to run everyone's lives. Really matters little if they are left or right.

[marasinghe]

49. if you mean Soviet marxism, agreed. however ....

i rather doubt the ilk of George Bernard Shaw, Charlie Chaplin, John Steinbeck & Paul Robeson - ever wanted anyone's lives controlled & directed by the government. as far as Shaw & Steinbeck are concerned, i have seen no evidence they were even sympathetic to the Soviet state

and, wouldn't what Orwell himself was advocating - by recommending the withholding of writing assignments by the British Foreign Office - amount to the same thing?

[Codeine]

58. Down and Out is amazing.

I read it three or four years back and immediately started passing the book around to all my friends. It's like The Jungle without the god-awful, turgid, ham-fisted prose.

[marasinghe]

62. isn't it? i did the same as you: passed it round to my friends.

sadly, even in New York City, liberal bastion as it is, i've seen the same scenarios repeated, to this day. Illegal immigrants, as well as destitute & homeless Americans, walking the same path - though, perhaps in less extreme fashion than that described by Orwell.

[Retrograde]

7. I prefer his essays and non-fiction

Especially "The Road to Wigan Pier" and, as another poster mentioned, "Down and Out in Paris and London".

[marasinghe]

14. whoops! thanks for jogging my memory - i transposed Paris & London in the title.

have not read "The Road to Wigan Pier"; but, will do so, thanks to your post.
Cheers.

[The Magistrate]

9. He Was An Honest Man, Sir, And Master Of Plain Speaking

About the best the twentieth centry has to offer.

[Bolo Boffin]

10. A lot of people don't realize Orwell was a democratic socialist

and wrote both Animal Farm and 1984 as cautionary tales on how totalitarianism could pervert those ideals into their exact opposites. Right-wing admirers of Orwell really don't understand this.

[ZombieHorde]

13. He is in the third class of authors.

First class: Gary Gygax
Second class: Shakespeare, Romero
Third class: Orwell, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickenson, etc.
Fourth class: Rowling, Patrick Rothfuss, etc.
Fifth class: Most authors
Sixth class: Beginning writers
Seventh class: Stephenie Meyer

[Rittermeister]

16. Gygax? Seriously?

N/T.

[ZombieHorde]

48. Do you think placing him in the first class belittles him?

Should I say he is elevated above and beyond the author class system?

[Codeine]

59. Roll to disbelieve.

OHHHH, a one! Fail!! You totally believe that Gygax is the greatest American twentieth-century writer, bar none.

You happily reach down to pick up the collection of paperback copies of Gygax's Gord the Rogue series when suddenly a powerful arm ripples from the gleaming, seemingly-wooden surface of the chest and strikes at you!



Roll for intiative.

[sadbear]

18. You forgot Kilgore Trout.

First class, of course.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

32. .

[raouldukelives]

47. Ting-a-ling! nt

[hfojvt]

15. I'd tell you

but I am afraid Big Brother is watching.

[Fumesucker]

17. An amazing how-to handbook writer for politicians..

[LadyHawkAZ]

19. I think he was amazingly on target

even when you allow for the fact that the threat he was describing was very obviously Soviet dystopia.

ETA also, he could write a fairly entertaining story.

[cherokeeprogressive]

20. He wrote a good book and he's dead.

I liked Toffler's Future Shock better.

[briv1016]

23. I read 1984 for the first time during the Bush Administration.

(I'm 24.)

After the Patriot Act, indefinite detention and gov't torture that book really shows that if things get beyond a certain point, there's no coming back.

[Starry Messenger]

25. George Orwell Fills Informer Role Of Big Brother

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19980701&slug=2758972

1998

"LONDON - In "1984," George Orwell's bleak fantasy of life in a nightmarish authoritarian world, Big Brother is everywhere and denunciations are the stuff of everyday life. The state monitors ordinary homes. Children inform on their parents, and parents on their colleagues. Privacy is banned.

In an era of clashing ideologies, Orwell's terrifying depiction of the ways an all-powerful state could destroy individual human dignity, published in 1949, won him fame as an opponent of totalitarianism.

But Orwell wasn't above a little informing himself. A stupefied Britain learned two years ago that the author had denounced "crypto-communist" writers and academics in the West to the government. Now the names are coming out.

This week, many of the British and American literary and establishment figures who are featured on his list of suspects will be identified for the first time in a new complete edition of his work, to be published tomorrow by Secker & Warburg. The edition isn't being published by a U.S. outlet but is being distributed in the States by Secker, says the publisher.

<snip>

Orwell said: "At the same time, it isn't a bad idea to have the people who are probably unreliable listed." He included the most openly leftist of British intellectuals, including writers George Bernard Shaw and J.B. Priestley, actor Charlie Chaplin, singer Paul Robeson, filmmaker Orson Welles and novelist John Steinbeck - whom he excoriated as a "spurious writer" and "pseudo-naif."

[UnrepentantLiberal]

33. Be careful what you hate...

[Mc Mike]

34. Wondered if someone would mention this.

Respectfully disagree, S.M. The LA\Seattle Times piece brackets the info of who informed the stupefied Britain of this info. If Orwell worked for the totalitarians, they wouldn't tell you he did. He didn't, so they tell us he did. Just an opinion.

No need for Secker and Warburg's complete works, because there are already a zillion ways you can get all of Eric Blair's writings, if you want. So the fact that they appear to be pro-Orwell, by virtue of adding to efforts to disseminate his works, doesn't lend credence to their act of holding a candle to the gov's attempt to label Orwell as a secret informer. This smacks of COINTELPRO's efforts to use 'snitch jackets' against targeted key activists, to get them discredited or killed. They did it to Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and a bunch of Panthers. They did it to Anna Mae Aquash in AIM. On S&W, keep in mind the money-losing enterprises Regnery, R Mellon Scab, and Murdoch support, just to get their black propaganda out there.

I'd like to paraphrase this excerpt from the L.A. Times:

"As a writer distressed by the social inequities of European life earlier this century, Orwell - and thousands of other intellectuals from all over Europe - had gone to Spain during the civil war of the 1930s to fight against fascism. But his exposure there to some of the more lurid Communist and Stalinist extremist groups on his own side left him with an enduring distrust of the far left."

Paraphrase of second sentence:

Getting shot in the throat, then finding out that he was on a liquidation list as 'pro-fascist' and needed to hustle his ass over the border, made him distrust the Stalinists as much as the corporate Western govs that backed Franco.

[bhikkhu]

26. An admirable visionary, thinker and writer

...but with that said, like most any writings, philosophies, ideologies, etc, of the past age, he is of limited use. If you want real solutions to the problems of our day you are best served by looking among the living.

[bemildred]

27. His novels, while good, were not his best work.

I do agree he stands out as a political novelist, but so much of that genre is tripe.

He was a fine essayist, at times, and ahead of his time politically. Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia, and his collected essays are all good reads. I haven't read Road to Wigam Pier. His moral, political, and intellectual integrity are seldom seen. I would compare him to Arendt and Camus, among his comtemporaries, though you would not want to push that too far. I prefer Animal Farm to 1984, and I would expect it to stand the test of time best of all his works, with a few of his essays.

[Permanut]

28. Brilliant satire in Animal Farm and 1984

So many events and words coming out of the right wing noise machine have reminded me of Orwell's writings; the swift boat liars' rewriting of Kerry's Vietnam record, for example, would be something Winston Smith would do.

[cbrer]

29. Brilliant and Prescient

Scarily so...

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

30. Among authors who are his equal, ...

he is more equal than the others.

[TBF]

36. As a writer or his politics?

Talented writer, product of his times, probably would've agreed with him politically especially in his younger years - he was socialist (anarcho syndicalist). The right have sort of co-opted him for his anti-Stalin views but doubtful that they realize he simply was more of a supporter of Trotsky as opposed to being a supporter of capitalism.

[socialist_n_TN]

40. Yep. A lot of people still make that mistake.......

And not just with Orwell. There are different tendencies in Marxism and most anti-communists don't see or look for the differences.

As a matter of fact, I've always heard that the character Snowball in "Animal Farm" was based on Trotsky, as was the state's arch-enemy Goldstein in "1984". From all I've heard and read he was NOT a supporter of the capitalist system. But he didn't support the Stalinists either.

[TBF]

41. Well now I have to re-read it but I bet you're right.

We certainly didn't cover any of this in Freshman English when I read it the first time. It was simply anti-Stalin, anti-totalitarianism - but none of the nuances I later learned.

[socialist_n_TN]

44. Hell, I don't even REMEMBER why I read it the first time..........

It might have been a school assignment or it might have been pleasure reading. But I agree we didn't cover it in school very deeply.

BTW, Orwell was not really a full fledged Trotskyist. He was really more of a democratic socialist with Trotskyist tendencies. At least that's what I've heard and read in Trot literature.

[white_wolf]

52. Snowball is definitely meant to be Trotsky.

He encouraged sending pigeons to spread the animal revolution while Napoleon(Stalin) wanted to fortify the farm and try and make it self-sustaining. He was eventually exiled by Napoleon, and like Trotsky, was even written out of the history of the animal revolution.

[jpak]

37. Double-plus good!

[vaberella]

38. His political novels are all prescient of the future but show a

terrifying similarity to the past. So while unknowingly predicting the future he is detailing the situations of the past or the present of his time.

[Mc Mike]

39. +1. Top thinker and analyst .

Oceana launching bombs into their own population, then blaming their enemy of the week, pre-supposed British intel's diverting IRA bombs from targets, to innocent British civilians (Paddy Flood case.) Or Likud undermining Arafat in favor of radical Palestinian orgs, who attack innocent Israelis. Or massive US gov involvement in Flight 103, or CIA training of binladen and the muhajadeen.

Telescreens, telecom surveillance, the memory hole, the two minute hate, gory slasher films, starving citizens by austerity measures due to fake wars, love as the ultimate thought crime, double-think, provocateurs leading the underground to evil thoughts and deeds.

'Homage To Catalonia' was a great in-depth analysis of the patchwork quilt of small groups that opposed Franco's fascism, as allies. Until the Western money people cut a deal with Stalin, that kept nazi Franco in charge until the mid-'70's. The Warsaw Resistance had a similar patchwork nature, without the nazi-sellout component.

'Coming Up For Air' made an intriguing environmental-mystical argument against fascism. Really something, coming from a rational materialist.

All of his essays are extremely enjoyable reading, and top notch analysis. 'Down and Out...' and 'Road to Wigan' are worthy of multiple reads.

Double plus good.

[Oilwellian]

42. What do I think of Orwell?

I think he made it abundantly clear that the common human is constantly at war with...the powers that be, who never stop at attempting to control and exploit their lives. We see it today just as clearly as Orwell did during his era. It's been a never ending battle throughout history.

I'm reminded of the epigram, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

[think]

45. yup

[deutsey]

50. +1

[coalition_unwilling]

43. Let's see, you consider Karl Marx to be a

"reactionary":

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=647883

And Orwell to be "one the best political novelists" (sic)

I guess that means you really don't like Orwell very much.

Before you read his novels, I suggest you start with Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language":

~snip~

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers.

~snip~

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

[bvar22]

46. If you have nothing to hide,

....you have nothing to fear.
Our government of the 1% LOVES the Working Class,
and only wants what is best for us!
I trust them completely!

[WhoIsNumberNone]

51. He was off by about 30 years

[LeftishBrit]

53. A great writer

Bizarre bit of trivia: his real name was Blair - and he was certainly a much better political thinker than that other Blair!

[Octafish]

54. Guy sure could connect the dots.

MR. RATE
"That's how a conspiracy works. Them boys on the Grassy Knoll? They were dead within three hours, buried in the damn desert, unmarked graves out past Terlingua."

AGENT MEMPHIS
"You know this for a fact?"

MR. RATE
"Still got the shovel."

Levon Helm played Mr. Rate and Michael Peña played Nick Memphis in the film, "Shooter."

What's that got to do with Orwell? It demonstrates, for one thing, how fiction can provide truth in a most unforgettable way.

[JVS]

56. Not a fan.

[RZM]

60. I've really enjoyed what I've read from him

That would be '1984,' 'Animal Farm,' and 'Homage to Catalonia.'

Great writing. It's also interesting watching everybody under the sun try to co-opt him and label his opponents' slogans 'Orwellian.'

That, IMO, is the mark of a truly great writer

[RZM]

60. I've enjoyed what I've read

'1984,' 'Animal Farm,' and 'Homage to Catalonia' were great reads.

It's also amusing watching everybody under the sun trying to smear their opponents' slogans as 'Orwellian.'

If everybody wants a piece of you, you're probably doing something right

[SwampG8r]

63. awesome writer

down and out in paris and london is great (hope i got the name right) about being a dishwasher
animal farm is a very good kids book to discuss government thinking and propanganda and its applications
1984 is prophetic
i enjoy slowly building my orwell bookshelf